


For Remembering

by atamasco



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, Headcanons for silver's past, Implied past relationship between silver and flint, M/M, Past relationship between silver and madi, Post-Canon, john silver is an old man, madi is dead I'm sorry, musings on people and their secrets, musings on war and its victims
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-14 16:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13593828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamasco/pseuds/atamasco
Summary: My name is Emma Madeline Silver, I am nineteen years old and I live in Bristol, England, where my parents own a tavern that used to be my grandfather’s.My grandfather’s name is John Silver; he is the father of my father. He is 78 years old and lives in the Old Men’s Home of our town – a place where elderly and widowed men are looked after.





	For Remembering

**Author's Note:**

> The concept for this fic was born about a year ago. Last week, I finally found the courage to write it down.

For many years now, our country has been in a state of peace, but the war is still present in our everyday lives. Children grow up with the stories about its horrors – the losses, the victims, the senseless destruction. The stories are passed on to new generations to make sure that they won’t be forgotten. They serve as a reminder of what a privilege it is to grow up safe. They serve as a warning, to never let it come this far ever again. And, of course, they serve to remember and honour the people who gave their lives for our freedom.

A war like this – this great, this terrible – doesn’t end with the signing of a peace treaty. The experience changes people, leaves its traces in their hearts, settles in their bones, and seeps through into every part of their lives – into their children, into their children’s children. And in this way too, war makes its victims, long after it’s over.

Even though I was born many years after the end of the war, and even though we live in peace now, I feel close to that part of the past, because it has impacted my family so deeply, and therefore impacted me.

 

* * * 

_Bristol, 18 March 1766_.

My name is Emma Madeline Silver, I am nineteen years old and I live in Bristol, England, where my parents own a tavern that used to be my grandfather’s.

My grandfather’s name is John Silver; he is the father of my father. He is 78 years old and lives in the Old Men’s Home of our town – a place where elderly and widowed men are looked after.

His hair is grey and curly, thinned out through the years. His beard is grey, bristly and wild. His skin is wrinkled and pale, his eyes deep-set and their colour a faded, greyish blue.

I visit him regularly, to do some chores or to simply chat with him. He doesn’t get many visitors, so I assume he enjoys the company.

I was baptised as _Madeline,_ after my grandmother – Madi. I have never known her, as she died a couple of years before I was born. What I know of her, I know through stories from my father and my grandfather, and the way they speak of her makes me wish I had known her – they paint her as an extraordinary woman. She was born into a well-respected family, and the early years of her life were peaceful and sheltered. But as she grew up, she came to understand more and more of how hostile the outside world was. When the bubble of peace she had always lived in finally burst, she was forced to go through awful things. She has suffered oppression – she has suffered inhuman things. And yet, this did not turn her bitter. She was kind, compassionate, a bright spirit – how could she not have been, if she married a man who looked so much like her oppressors?

Even many years after her passing, my grandfather still cuts out articles from the newspaper that tell the stories of what my grandmother and other people like her have experienced. He cuts them out and hands them to me, so that I will know the history of my grandmother and her family, and never forget.

 

* * *  

In my grandfather’s house was a room full of clutter – a lifetime of poverty had turned him into a hoarder of all kinds of useless things. My parents and I had secretly assigned ourselves the task of trying to sort out what could be kept and what could be thrown out.

Curious, I picked up a book and leafed through it until a loose piece of paper fell out and landed at my feet before I could catch it. I picked it up and discovered that it wasn’t a page of the book – it was a blank sheet with pencil drawings on it. Faces of different men, scattered across the page, some of them with long hair, some bald. All of them bearded. 

I turned the paper in my hands. On the back were some words written in ink:

_Dear John,_

_For Remembering._

_James._

The paper was yellowed, wrinkled at the edges. My cheeks burned as if I had uncovered some deep secret, something that I could only half understand. I sensed it, that I was on the edge of finding something important, and I knew this was not my place, I was stepping out of line, but I sneaked the book out of the room and carefully placed it into the bag that I’d brought with me that day.

At home I would be able to have a closer look in private.

In the evening I withdrew to my bedroom, lit a candle, opened the book, and took out the paper. As I looked at the drawings, I noticed that they were actually the faces of just one man. The nose, the cheekbones, the brows – I started to recognise them. And, I saw now – the faces had a name, scribbled onto a corner of the front of the page:

_Captain James Flint._

 

* * *

My grandfather never talked about his past. What I knew of him, I knew through stories from my father.

John Silver was born in Spain, in a town close to the palace where the Mad King lived. As a child he was often witness to the parades of carriages, horses and soldiers that passed through the small town’s streets. 

Silver never knew his mother – she died only a couple of months after he was born. His father was left a widower with a small child to care for. He was never able to tell Silver much about his mother, because the memories of her caused him too much grief, even after many years. As his father had to work during the day, Silver was left in the care of a family member. Instead of looking after the little boy, they neglected him and left him sitting in his baby chair all day.

After some years, Silver’s father remarried, and his father and stepmother had a daughter. For the first time in his life, Silver was part of a real family, with a father and a mother and a little baby sister. They were a poor family, but he was happy.

The little girl was favoured by her parents – she was _theirs,_ the child of both of them. She would get bread with butter, he would get his slice plain. Silver did well in school, but there was no money for him to continue his education. At the age of twelve he stopped school and took on a job – the first of many, low-paid and undervalued. His father wanted Silver to follow in his footsteps, but Silver didn’t want the same. His father was rigid, and Silver was stubborn. Once Silver learnt of a war that was going on in a strange land, in a distant part of the world, he left home and crossed the ocean.

I don’t know why he decided to chase a war. Perhaps it was the struggles with his father that pushed him away. Perhaps he thought he could make easy money there – war always creates jobs. I will never understand the choices he made then. He never talked about the years of his life that he spent in that far-away place.

He must have known the pirates that ruled the islands at that time, but if he sympathised with them, or was himself perhaps even one of them, I do not know.

 

* * *

_Captain James Flint._

_1715._

I sensed that this man, this Captain James Flint, was someone important to my grandfather. Why else keep this paper for so long. Why else attempt to commit his likeness to paper.

The paper was crumpled, fold-lines running through it. It had been handled, touched – it had been damaged and yet deemed important enough to save.

Some say that memories can be inherited. I may not have any memories of the man nor the drawings, but I knew, I _knew_ there was something there – a story, a truth locked away in my blood that had been passed on to me through my father, through my grandfather.

 

* * *

_14 August 1766._

I set down the teacups on the table and took my seat beside him.

“How are you doing, Emma?” Grandfather asked me, dropping spoons of sugar into his tea.

“I’m very well, thank you,” I answered.

It was the middle of summer, and it was hot in the small room – as if I didn’t feel flustered enough already: I had brought the book with the paper with me, and I planned on showing it to him, to ask him if he knew what it all meant.

We talked about the usual subjects for a while – the weather, the family and the tavern. When a silence fell, I took the book from my bag and placed it on the table, right in front of him.

“I found something in your room while cleaning the other day,” I said, my voice sounding surprisingly calm with how nervous I was. “I was wondering if you could tell me about this.”

“Oh?” he said, unsuspecting.

I opened the book to reveal the paper with the drawings. I waited a few seconds before speaking, to let him have a look.

“Do you know who this is?”

He stared at the paper. “No, I don’t.”

I didn’t know if I should believe him. His name was mentioned in the writing – _John –_ so he must have seen this paper before. Even so, he might have truly forgotten about it. I supposed that was his advantage now – to be able to avoid difficult questions under the guise of poor memory and old age.

I turned the paper to show him the writing. “And this? Do you know what this says?”

I didn’t dare to read the words aloud, to say the name that was written there and bring it alive into the room.

I didn’t want to give up yet. I knew I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t at least try to get some answers. He was an old man; he may not live for very much longer, and then anything he might have known would be lost forever.

This didn’t mean, however, that I didn’t feel guilt over pushing an old man, my own grandfather, into memories he clearly didn’t like to visit.

He stared at the words, his expression blank.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen this before.”

We both sat very still for a while, in a silence that was only disturbed by the distant coughs and footsteps from the other inhabitants of the Home that could be heard through the closed door. I carefully tucked the paper back between the pages and closed the book.

Perhaps he really didn’t remember. At least I had tried to get some answers, and that was enough. He didn’t owe them to me, after all.

“I do want to be honest with you,” he said quietly. “That man, he was a pirate. He was my friend.”

These unfamiliar words from my grandfather’s mouth – they were _truths._ I had unlocked something. He had decided to give me this. I feared that my heart would beat right through my chest with excitement and anticipation.

“I met him when I had something that he wanted – information about a prize. I was running through the dark with him and his crew chasing after me, jumping and climbing over the rocks until he suddenly crashed into me and pushed me up against the rocks – caught!” Silver chuckled at the memory.

I kept silent as I listened and desperately tried to carve every single word he said into my mind, to keep them safe, hold onto them, because I knew I would never hear this again, and when he died I would be the only person left who had known the truth about him.

“What happened to him?”

Silver’s pale blue eyes looked dark, sunken into his skull. “He drowned.”

I wanted to ask so many things, about this man, about my grandfather’s past, about all the things that happened back then and what it had been like and what _he_ had been like, but I couldn’t find the words, and I feared that one wrong word could be the end of this conversation and he would shut down again, forever.

He looked up at me, his face cleared up, and a smile under his moustache. “Did you bring anything else with you?”

I knew him. I knew he had slipped the mask back on. This was the furthest I had ever been allowed, and that I ever would be.

I smiled back at him. “No. That was all.”

I looked out the window, to see crows walking over the grass in the courtyard. To see old men shuffling by, supported by their relatives.  

_He was a pirate._

_He was my friend._

_He drowned._

I wondered what went on in that mind of his. I always wondered. I had answers now, and a million more questions in their place.

“It only costs,” he mumbled.  

I turned back to him, one eyebrow raised. “I’m sorry?”

He was staring ahead, at nothing. “It only costs,” he repeated, louder.

“What costs?”

“War!” he exclaimed, gesturing with his hands to accentuate the force of his words. “It only costs – lives, loves, hurt, poverty… It’s all bad. Never join in, Emma.” He looked at me. “You wouldn’t, would you? Make war?”

I laughed at the ridiculousness of the thought – me, an insignificant, nineteen-year-old girl? “No, I definitely won’t. I wasn’t planning on it. I think things are quite fine the way they are now.”

He relaxed, sagged down a little in his chair. “Yes, I think so too.”

 

* * *

_Captain James Flint._

How could this man have been good, if he was a pirate? If he was a bad man, and he was my grandfather’s friend, what did that make my grandfather?

As my grandfather’s granddaughter, what did that make _me?_

 

* * *

_4 February 1767._

On Christmas Day my parents organised a dinner and invited family and friends. We picked up Grandfather from the Home to join us in celebration. I sat next to him at the dinner table – I cut his food for him and decided to bring it to his mouth too after he’d first tried to do it himself but spilled peas and gravy onto his lap. He let me feed him. He didn’t join in conversations – all the talk went over his head; his mind was too slow these days to follow so much chatter. But he smiled, and looked happy.

His health quickly declined after December. He stopped eating, could only take sips of water through a straw. He lost weight at an alarming rate. He had been sick before, but never like this.

It was over in about two weeks. He spent his last days lying in bed, sleeping most of the time. When we visited him, we sat by his bedside and held his hand. When he saw us, and recognised us, he tried to say our names. He couldn’t speak anything else anymore – but at least he still recognised us. He held on to us with bony, yet surprisingly strong fingers.

I held his hand as I watched him doze off, and tears started rolling down my cheeks. I cried for him, for how helpless and fragile he looked in this bed, for how he’d ruined so many things for himself by being too hard-headed to live up to his mistakes, for everything he’d had to suffer through in his miserable life and this was how he had to meet his end – small and weak and alone.

It took days. He must have suffered, but there was no way to ease it. We could only hope that he would let go quickly, but stubborn as he was, he clung on to life until his last breath. Then, finally, late on a February evening, a messenger from the Home brought us the news – he had passed away.

 

* * *

_ 21 May 1767. _

It is May now, three months after his death. At his funeral, I cried. But I do not miss him. There was no warmth in him. He simply didn’t have it in him. I think he loved us, his son, his daughter-in-law, his grandchildren. He cared for us – I believe that. He simply wasn’t a man to easily show it.

I don’t think I knew him. He held so many secrets inside himself.

All his hurt, and love, and suffering, and happiness, his tears and laughter – it’s all gone, as if it never meant anything. All his secrets are gone with him. I have written down what I know of him, and of my grandmother, so that their stories will not be lost through time.

Sometimes I think about him, as you might think of so many things in a day. But I do not miss him.

In my room, I keep a book with a loose sheet of paper in it, with a stranger’s face on it. Via this paper, Captain Flint’s hand touches mine over the span of fifty years. And I will keep him safe, whether he deserves it or not.

It is an artefact clouded in mystery, and yet so telling – my grandfather loved someone and lost them.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story is nothing more than an exploration of my own thoughts and feelings. It is not my intention to be critical of any character. Truth is more complicated than fiction. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. I'm @undiscovereduniverse on tumblr.


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